F1 needs more teams it needs more entries than there are grid places available.

To make things more interesting. Wouldn't you agree? It would be great to revisit the days when there were 35 or more cars competing for just 26 places on the grid in my opinion and not always having the exact same cars/drivers in every race like in the late 80's and early 90's.

I'm not sure that is really interesting. Eliminated teams will almost always be backmarkers, few people really care about. Besides who will sponsor such teams? It is difficult enough to find sponsors these days, and with such rules team would not be able to guarantee even showing sponsor's logo during race...

I'm not sure that is really interesting. Eliminated teams will almost always be backmarkers, few people really care about. Besides who will sponsor such teams? It is difficult enough to find sponsors these days, and with such rules team would not be able to guarantee even showing sponsor's logo during race...

Pay drivers? Which is kind of the whole problem of this idea if you'd ask me.

Unfortunately, only the top 10 teams of the year receive financial help. For the good of the sport Bernie and company need to fund those small teams - at least give them free freight. More teams would be nice, but the lower-end teams don't get the support. The sport needs to help them a bit because they can't compete with the likes of Ferrari.

Why would driver want to pay for a seat in the car which is not even sure to race?

It's not like I think they would, I was just grasping for possibiliteries. But if a new team does seem fast for whatever reason and a rich company backs a driver by paying a last-minute-ticket so to say, these things could happen. But not in large scale and it wouldn't make sense long term.

Why on earth should Bernie or CVC fund extra teams? How would the teams that have fought long and hard to secire vital sponsorship over the past years react to that? What a ridiculous suggestion.

I think he meant that Bernie could stop refusing teams under 10th place in WCC a payment from FOM. 10th team get hell a lot of cash from it, and 11th gets nothing. If it would change, there would be a chance that lower teams could survive some way. If it wouldn't- no way.

As for the merit of the topic, no way it ever happens. Nobody is going to spend dozens of millions of € and find himself outside the race most of the time. Now we have several teams who get dozens of millions of € from Bernie, score points regularly and still struggle financially. Imagine how would struggle the one who doesn't get anything from Bernie and which can't even qualify to the race. It would not survive even one season. Paydrivers are not going to pay >$10 million if they have no guarantee of participating in the race.

back then it was affordable to transport a slightly out of spec car to a few races and try and qualify, these days a car is pretty much illegal at the end of the season. And the initial outlay to just build a car, even a 2 seconds a lap slower car, is in the tens of millions. Where are all these teams that will neverqualify for a race find the money?

Having so many more cars that spaces available on the grid wasn't even sustainable in the late 80s-early 90s. The entry list very quickly dropped back to less than 30. It's actually a bit sad that F1 hasn't had full starting grids since 1995, and I think something needs to be done to ensure a minimum of 26 cars start each race. But I don't see how it could be sustainable with more than a couple of cars missing out on starting the race each weekend.

What I do think should be allowed is the option of 1 car teams in some cases. Perhaps new teams could run 1 car if they needed to in their first 3 seasons or something? Also I'd suggest allowing any team to run a 3rd car at a limited, pre-selected number of events, e.g. Ferrari running a 3rd at Monza or McLaren a 3rd at Silverstone.

I think what could be more interesting, but not going to happen, is to have a league system with teams being promoted/demoted at the end of each season.

You'd need a spec series to make that even remotely feasible and even then, it'd be pretty hard and expensive for teams to adjust to a new racing series every odd year.

One car teams are similarly unrealistic. One car less means half the testing, half the Free Practice experience, half the exposure on TV, half the money from pay drivers and half the chance to have one of your cars finish the race. And all of that for probably about 90% of the budget of a regular team.

You might have a few extra entrants if they allowed single car teams and they didn't require a contract saying they will attend every race of the calendar like we have at the moment. I'd say that the best method would be to have customer chassis available where the test drivers could be loaned to the satellite teams giving them some much needed race time (given the testing rules) , but primarily the need for a budget cap is the major stumbling block...

Maybe if, post 2014, customer cars can be used, it would be a viable option. And I second the notion of single car teams. I'm not for pre-qualifying though. Just make sure the number is around 26, that's the magic number imho.

That's an awesome idea but a team couldn't afford to spend a year out of F1 purely developing a car for the next season.

If there was a proper Formula Two again, where teams could design and build their own cars, it might be possible. The championship winner in F2 moves up, while the last places team in F1 moves down.

Obviously though, it can't be as simple as league systems in other sports. The rules would have to be very similar to allow teams to easily transition from one formula to the other, or else it would have to work on a two year basis, but then that choice would be rather unfair for a number of reasons. Chances are though that F1 would have to subsidise both championships, and work to lower budgets so that the jump from one to the other isn't so impossible.

Maybe it's time to put some of this blame on the teams. Why do they keep signing new Concorde agreements if they think their being screwed?

Because they have not enough power.

It works that way: Bernie offers some good deals indeed to top teams. They sign them, because they're good deals.

If he has those deals with top teams signed, he offers worse deals to midfield teams. They take what he gives them because they have no other option. They may take what he gives them or take nothing. They will not get support from top teams to negotiate better deals because it's not in top teams' interest to have a strong midfield. They may threaten to leave F1 but where will they go? Ferrari and some other will be ready to race more than two cars anyway, so Bernie doesn't care.

Then he doesn't care about backmarkers. He don't want to spend anymore money because it's not a problem for him when Marussia exit F1.

I really hate the way it works, but there is little to do with it as long as Bernie has as much power as now. He wants to save as much money as possible, so only a couple of top teams get money they deserve, other get less than they deserve because they don't have enough politic power and I think it's bad for the competiton, but what can I do about it... nothing.

it would be good to have a few DNQs listed again, maybe even go back to having pre-qualifying, it could be shown on Sky no problem. And it would have the added bonus of giving young drivers F1 experience.

Maybe instead of having under funded - no hopers, not qualifying, existing teams could have a "B" car, one that's maybe a couple of steps behind the main team in terms of development, and put their Friday driver in it to try to qualify

Having so many more cars that spaces available on the grid wasn't even sustainable in the late 80s-early 90s. The entry list very quickly dropped back to less than 30. It's actually a bit sad that F1 hasn't had full starting grids since 1995, and I think something needs to be done to ensure a minimum of 26 cars start each race. But I don't see how it could be sustainable with more than a couple of cars missing out on starting the race each weekend.

There are obvious answers to how to get more teams on the grid, and how to make them acceptably competitive. Unfortunately any answer needs to be agreed upon by the existing teams, and they're all interested in themselves first, and the fans/ sport a very, very, very distant second. No team is going to say yes to changes that will threaten that team's position, which is in part why we have increasingly restrictive, and at times almost "stock" technical regulations. Ferrari won't want more aero freedom, Red Bull won't want more track testing, and so it goes on.

A looser set of rules, and a budget cap of sub 100m would be a good start, but big spending teams don't want to lose their cash advantage, and successful teams don't want to see their evolutionary designs usurped by a smaller team. Customer cars would do wonders, but a certain Mr Williams quickly forgot that's how he started, last time customer chassis were suggested.

I'd like to see something along the lines of teams having to sell their designs 12 months after introducing them, so any team could buy the designs and use them to produce their own car. This is prototype racing anyway, so a top team has little to worry about (unless they do a McLaren 2013) if another team basically builds their last year's car. And it would also make technical cheating much more difficult, if everyone had access to the blueprints and could see what was going on under the skin.

A cap on engine, gearbox and brake supplier costs would be a huge help, if the levels were set sensibly.

But a big thing required to get new teams in, is to get rid of this closed shop franchise idiocy, and also have *all* the teams receiving either CVC money, or direct payments from the tracks and TV companies. Have it so a team doesn't have to do every race, and have all teams paid on an appearance basis. But instead, the teams will still complain they don't get enough of the cake, whilst still re-signing Bernie's paperwork because he's made the bosses, as well as himself, very wealthy. Again, it's another example of them all saying they want something different, but ultimately continuing the status quo because it's easier and less risky.

We need cars that are actually different to each other, and we need circuits that are different to each other so the cars can show their strengths and weaknesses each weekend. The growing move to pay tv needs to be reversed so the sport can reach a wider casual fan base, and bring in more sponsor interest. More of the money made by the sport, needs to stay in the sport, and the amount of money used by the sport needs to come down significantly.

Nothing good is going to happen though, the last person who tried to open up the rules in exchange for limiting the costs got ridiculed for his private pleasures, and ousted not that long after. And as much as I felt he did a lot of bad for F1, he wasn't always wrong.

back then it was affordable to transport a slightly out of spec car to a few races and try and qualify, these days a car is pretty much illegal at the end of the season. And the initial outlay to just build a car, even a 2 seconds a lap slower car, is in the tens of millions. Where are all these teams that will neverqualify for a race find the money?

This is the most interesting point here IMO. It's not like the cars are simply obsolete, uncompetitive, worn out or need a rebuild. Every year the changes to the rules, though small, are enough to make last years car completely illegal. If that could change, and if the teams could make some money from selling the older chassis to customers, the slippery pole will at least look like it is capable of being climbed.

Without that, the costs are just too prohibitive for anyone to risk sepnding big in order to not qualify.

I'd like to see something along the lines of teams having to sell their designs 12 months after introducing them, so any team could buy the designs and use them to produce their own car. This is prototype racing anyway, so a top team has little to worry about (unless they do a McLaren 2013) if another team basically builds their last year's car. And it would also make technical cheating much more difficult, if everyone had access to the blueprints and could see what was going on under the skin.

Just like the Super Aguri SA07 was an update of the previous years Honda after acquiring the IP rights to the RA06. If the rules and Concorde Agreement are changed to allow copies of cars by other teams, you would either be back to Toro Rosso and Red Bull running the same cars, or Red Bull selling their previous years designs to half the field.

The problem of sharing the money out differently, or to allow one car teams or teams to choose which races to run at, or changing the rules to allow sharing of car designs, is that you would have to get all the current teams to tear up the current Concorde Agreement and be happy to receive less FOM funds in exchange for allowing new teams to turn up with cars built from designs bought from the top teams. I can't think anyone would believe Caterham would be happy to sign away some of their funding in exchange for having to race against new teams with updated RB8s.